Avoiding Character Cliches

This is probably the number one problem of most, if not ALL, RPGs. The following are always in RPGs these days, it seems like:

- Main sword wielding protagonist with a heart of gold and chilvalrous intentions ready to save the world.
- Somewhat spoiled and naive princess and healer who is knowledgeable of the world in books but has no firsthand experience due to being cooped up in the castle her whole life.
- Big and burly and arrogant/small and shrimpy and arrogant guy who has the capacity to become the strongest character in terms of HP and Attack Power.
- Older male who is very perverted and is constantly hitting on the female party members.
- Tomboyish female mage who always starts to soften up toward the end of the game/Quiet male mage who values his intelligence over all else, but begins to soften up towards his friends towards the end of the game.
- Scantily clad female warrior who always has a tough yet flirtatious attitude with the male lead protagonist and older male pervert and wears enough armor to cover a fourth of the person.
- Very powerful character you have in your party/play as for all of one fight, then eventually must fight against.
- Very powerful boss fight against a character who has high hp and awesome skills, then joins the party and has a fraction of the HP and very few, if any, of the skills he had in the boss fight.

The following scenes are always in these games as well:

- The part where the naive princess asks the main swordsman, after he enters the castle, to help her leave the castle.
- The main villain will always be revealed somewhat early, but wont be recognized as the main villain until later.
- The main villain is never the final boss. The final boss is always revealed soon after the main villains death.
- The main protagonist and the princess are always together in the final cutscene. Whether it be as lovers or friends.
- One of the main characters always turns on you, OR, one of the greater villains becomes one of the party members with reduced stats.

These are all very easy to avoid if you know what you’re doing. The main character, well, there’s either one or two cliches. Either the chivalrous Knight, or the uncaring Emo. To avoid these, base him off of a normal human. Make him react as a person would react. Would a normal person stand strong against a world ending monster, or what they doubt themself and get scared? Any normal person would get scared crapless.

The princess is easy to avoid because it’s actually somewhat difficult to write naivety for most writers because it involves actually dumbing oneself down to a point sometimes, and making the world seem new when we already know such a good deal about it.

The perverted old man is an easy fix as well. Instead of a pervert, make him a sage like character.

The burly person cliche can for the most part be forgiven, as this is, all things considered, a very human character in terms of personality, as well as tomboyish female and quiet genius male mage. But there are still flaws in their design.

The male always is some kind of smobby genius. Because someone is smart does not mean they must always be snobby. The point of being intelligent is to share your intelligence with others. A mage willing to share his vast intelligence, and even teach some of the other characters some lesser magic, is much preferred to me.

The female in the small amount of armor…GIVE HER MORE ARMOR! If they are a swordswoman or a Lancer, flirting should not be their best asset. They should be tough and covered in armor.

The very powerful character that gets included in the party, and the character that joins after you fight them with reduced stats, very easy fix.

DON’T USE THEM!!!!!

There are more, for advanced tips. But I will save those for a later lesson.